You've Identified a Production Issue-Now Find a Solution
Published: May 28th, 2009
While inspection and vision systems allow manufacturers to find off-quality issues, they can fall short of communicating the reason behind the process upset, says Russell Leonard of Monitoring Technology Corp. (Fairfax, VA). His company offers the 20/20 Hindsight, an industrial high-speed camera designed specifically to troubleshoot packaging and production operations.
“For example, consider a vision system inspecting caps on a vial production line that begins rejecting one or two vials per hour. The inspection system only tells the line operators that a process upset is occurring at intermittent intervals,” he explains. “To troubleshoot the issue, plant personnel could roll a 20/20 Hindsight camera kiosk to the vial capper to review the process. Not only can the operators review the process slow motion, they can actually trigger the 20/20 Hindsight system using a downstream reject from the inspection system.”
The 20/20 Hindsight software can be configured so that every time a vial is rejected, the system will automatically create a video clip of that exact vial coming off the capper. Production personnel can then quickly playback the video frame-by-frame on the 20/20 unit, determine the root cause of the issue, and take corrective action.
By understanding “why” a process upset occurs, manufacturers can increase OEE, increase the meantime between failures, and decrease off-quality product,” Leonard says.
20/20 Hindsight has just announced high-speed camera technology for clean room environments. “Using a wireless signal capable of transmitting over 300 feet, operators can troubleshoot clean room issues from an external location without ever having to gown up,” says Leonard. The system is capable of recording more than 50 hours of continuous video.
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